


when the caged bird sings

by Scribblequote



Category: Naruto
Genre: AU world, Anbu Hatake Kakashi, BAMF Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto), Baby Badasses, Hatake Kakashi is a Troll, Looking for a Beta, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Fluff, Team Seven Centric, Team as Family, Uchiha Clan-centric, Uzumaki Naruto is a Good Friend, and a great source of comedy, but his also extremely hurt lads, but tolerable, buts he's also hurt, heavily realiant on comedy since its kinda serious, im writing kids how they should be written since some of yall clearly never had siblings, its a rewrite of naruto, kids are mad stupid, naruto is a ball of sunshine, pls help me, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26163247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribblequote/pseuds/Scribblequote
Summary: The one where Fugaku Uchiha decides to step in and protect his family. Except that now it's less political and more personal when Sasuke is looking to find someone to swap an eye with, Sakura creates a kekkei genkai and Naruto really wants everyone to meet old man Kurama.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	1. chapter one; introductions are in order

**Author's Note:**

> Inu= dog  
> Nezumi= mouse  
> Kuma= bear  
> Taka= hawk

“Souya, Shinrin, Denki."

Fugaku is sitting on a tatami mat, his attention solely on his wife. She's still as ethereal as the day he met her, aged like fine wine even though she is three years his senior and has given birth to two children. His wife is still the quiet kunoichi that he remembers, Sakumo’s most forgettable student. Her hair used to be short back then, he muses, and she was all hard muscle and sharp elbows. Now, she's the very embodiment of motherhood and Fugaku still loves the infiltration specialist turned housewife. 

Mikoto shifts in her position and a frown graces her face. Her back is hunched, eyes closed in concentration and her hands are in the rat seal. “Denki and Souya are the only ones left now.” 

Fugaku hopes he lives long enough to see her hit old age. 

“Denki is next.”

It's two o'clock in the morning and he knows that the compound's border is crawling with ANBU but the grotesque image of insects scurrying over his skin and through his ears is what's occupying his mind. He blinks a few times. His gaze lowers to the hands in his laps. The cup in his hands is tilted at a dangerous angle, the tea is about to spill. The tea has long gone cold. Fugaku tries to recall days spent catching sight of a younger Mikoto with her sensei’s knowing look always in the background somewhere.

“That is all of them.” She visibly relaxes. He visibly tenses.

The insects that he felt earlier are now becoming bolder. They're everywhere. He knows that his face betrays none of the hysteria he feels, but he knows that to a skilled sensor such as his wife, she can feel his chakra raging under his skin. Even so she takes her time to shake off any feelings of stiffness before digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. He knows she can feel how wound up tightly he is feeling and he appreciates the space she's giving him. Mikoto is blinking up at him, her eyes are getting used to the candles adorning the ground beside him. He catches her nose scrunching up when she turns her head to the left and is blinded by the brightness of the moon. She's flawless under the moon's glow, her laugh lines mar her face and Fugaku wants to bestow the biggest curse of his predecessors starting with fucking Madara--

There's a gasp. Her eyes widened dramatically. She loses all the colour in her face. “His baby...his baby girl.” A wounded noise leaves her and she looks as though she was the one killed. “Gods. Fugaku. Fugaku, the twins.” He stands up at that and makes way to one of the many cats loitering around his property. 

The realisation hits her while Fugaku is in the middle of sending the Hyuuga a message through the summoning cat he had chosen. There's a note in his hand that reads 'if we truly are your kin, help us'. The animal stretches languidly before straightening up to let its contractor fit the note into its collar. The animal yawns and scratches its ear. Even in the middle of a massacre the cat takes its time before it disappears in a cloud of smoke that smells strongly of catnip. By that time the Patriarch is back to his original spot on the floor with his wife, a consoling hand on her shoulder as she shakes.

“The ANBU, Fugaku. They're not stopping him. Why isn't anyone stopping him?”

Fugaku hopes they live long enough to see tomorrow.

::

When Sasuke wakes up, he is in a very miserable mood. His head is pounding with the force of a hundred hammers, his mouth feels like someone stuffed a lot of cotton into it, and he's seeing double of everything in the room. There's a human walking up to him, but his hair is all weird and up, so Sasuke kinda thinks that might be the cat summons messing around with him. He still remembers them stacking themselves on top of each other with a trench coat thrown over them as they ran godspeed at him. He squints, partly to stop himself from crying at the scary memory but also to help himself see better. Whatever it is in front of him has a stupid face but they also have a glass of water in their hands that is being pressed to his lips, so Sasuke tells himself that he'll wait for the figure to draw a little closer before he punches him in the balls. Or a body if it's the stacked up cats again.

The tepid water is moved away from him once he starts to choke on it. He coughs as he lays back down and closes his eyes. There's a lot of sound around him in the form of people chatting. People chatting quietly, he corrects himself. There's also the loud noises of a small girl's voice that sticks out. Sasuke wants to get up and see who that is so he starts blinking rapidly. This place is lit up with long beams of fluorescent light stuck to the ceiling. The light above him is dimmed down in comparison to the other beams in the room. There are no windows in the room which is such a bummer. The girl's voice has moved from one area to the other and the little Uchiha frowns at that. 

The place smells familiar though, even if he knows that this is definitely not home. It smells like that cupboard that his mom tells him to never touch because it has products that shouldn't be ingested. But he feels relaxed in this environment and furrows his face into the leather couch. Itachi. This place smells like Itachi. 

Sasuke lets the biggest grin split his face before sitting up right. It takes a lot of effort on his behalf to do this, and he suddenly feels like he's gonna throw up. This was definitely Shisui's doing. Sasuke was going to tell on him to mother. He remembers being shot up with a bit of horse tranquiliser thanks to his cousin's experimentation. He also remembers the piping hot frying pan that his mom launched at Shisui's head that tore a massive hole in two separate walls before embedding itself into the third hard surface three centimetres away from his cousin's paling face. He still managed to continue his escape and wasn't seen in the village for two months after that. Sasuke remembers this fondly and never fails to show the holes in the walls to Hinata whenever she's over for tea ceremonies. 

There's a shout that definitely came from a woman before a mass of pink and green is gliding over him. The maybe--human entity catches the bundle before hurling it to his right without looking where it lands. It takes Sasuke a minute to realise that they're more likely than not throwing around a pint sized girl. Probably the same one that had been extremely loud. There's a woman with purple hair who's running around after the child as she shouts words that would've made his mom throw several forks at her for saying around kids. A peel of childish laughter as the bundle's flung halfway across the room confirms his suspicions.

The Creature is suddenly beside him staring at eye level. He's squatted down, Sasuke realizes absentmindedly. The boy is still laying on the couch, his body unmoving because of the embarrassingly squeaky noises it creates. He's still seeing doubles but not as bad as before so he definitely knows that Shisui is gonna die tonight. In the span of a second Sasuke freezes as the Thing peels its face of and oh my gods Uncle was right demons really did come for the souls of children that didn't brush their teeth before bed time and oh my god--

Oh. It's a mask. Sasuke squints at the very human man some more. Oh. 

"You have a single sharingan? How come I don't know you uncle? Where'd you live? Why is one eye on only? Why--," he started coughing and his newly introduced relative was already halfway gone. He frowned a little and made quick work of whipping away a few stray tears that sprung from the pain, believing that his chatter really did scare away Uncle. All doubts were gone in the blink of an eye when the man turned around to reveal a cup of water in his hands. Sasuke breathed into the cup as he gulped down the warm water, his gaze matching the other Uchiha's stare. He gave up the cup once it was empty and proceeded to practically vibrate in his chair. The man had to duck as the pink and green girl from before went ‘nyoom’ over his head. Sasuke saw the man give someone a very scathing look as his sharingan did a swirly thing. Sasuke nodded his head in an approving manner. The weird man is once again beside him in a sec.

"It...it was given to me by a friend." The man reaches into his pocket and takes out a Konoha headband and ties it around his head. His mask (previous face) hangs off his hip. "I'm not an Uchiha." The man looks tense, Sasuke notices sadly. Kinda like Itachi whenever father shouts at him. Sasuke reaches out and pats his silly hair in a comforting way just as the strange man slings his headband to cover the sharingan eye.

The man freezes up a little and Sasuke is actually getting the hang of this whole comforting thing so he continues. "Yeah goddess Amaterasu gave an eye to her blind husband. Mama said it's a love thing because Uchiha love lots."

"Ah." The not--Uchiha was still frozen in place but that's alright because as long as there was love everything was gonna be ok according to Mother.

"I'm gonna give one of my eyes to my wife. We're gonna swap eyes." Sasuke isn't sure if what he said was a bad thing because suddenly the man's eye goes really big and he's waving a hand around as he calms down.

"Maa, i don't know what your dad will say about that."

"You know my dad?"

"Yes. I was ordered by him to take care of you for the night."

"Is it still night time?"

"Yes and I think you should go back to sleep." The swirl of a sharingan, a girl's cry of laughter, and then nothing.

::

He's gaining ground on them if Mikoto's hysterics are anything to go by. Fugaku hopes that the Uchiha's self proclaimed rivals arrive in time to take care of the corpses, after all it takes someone from a dojutsu clan to understand the necessities of proper burials to avoid dojutsu theft. His form is hunched as he tries to console his wife and try as he might he can't stop this foreboding feeling from squeezing the air out of his lungs.

"The ANBU, Fugaku..."

He lets out a hum and in the middle of his pity party his sharingan springs to life before resting at its mangekyou phase. He wonders what could have driven Itachi to pursue such a self damning course of action. Maybe he really was the one to end Shisui's life. Maybe his loyalties were never with the clan. Fugaku finds himself unable to bring forth anger at his son. There is only disappointment and anguish. He thinks back to the last war, how his wife gave birth to Itachi and two days later was stationed at Konoha's gates as part of patrol because every able bodied shinobi was being pulled out of retirement and school and jail and every corner of this gods forsaken village to fight. He had barely enough chakra to keep him from collapsing of chakra exhaustion and all of his energy was going into taijutsu and begging for Amaterasu's help. He remembers a Kumo battalion that drove his team all the way from the borders of Fire country, remembers true fear for his village when he realises that they were being picked off one by one while one of the enemy flashed through a jutsu that permanently altered his Kumo comrades' physical appearance into that of the Konoha nin. And then Mikoto was suddenly beside him instead of back in the trees where she had been giving long distance support and all he wanted to do was scream and shout at her because can't you see we're all dying here woman, run back before you join us. Then she's in front of him, and there's blood spurting out of her mouth and oh, his kunai is stuck into his wife's midsection and oh gods it's completely twisted into her, he just touched her guts and. And then. Pain. Pain and agony like none he'd ever felt before. And the mangekyou is bestowed to him from Ametarasu's bosom and he remembers tales from his childhood, she sees all Fugaku dear, and she loves us all equally, but those who suffer a great loss are gifted a part of her so that she may do what every mother strives to do, that is to alleviate her children's pain as much as she can.

He remembers Kushina's fury that day as somehow she felt Mikoto's death but really it wasn't since she's alive now. Remembered how she tore through one of Konoha's impenetrable walls with the Kyubi's chakra singing its vengeance as it burned everything it touched. And then there was silence as Kumo realised that this was the nine tails headed this way and if they don't start running right now they will die a death that will be so horrifying, the afterlife wouldn't accept them. Then there was a type of calmness that Fugaku wasn't able to fully appreciate because he'd just killed his wife and she was his moon and stars and now he was damned for an eternity and a half and please Amaterasu please save her. But most of all he remembers Kushina punching him square in the face before getting onto her knees and gently probing Mikoto with medical chakra. In the midst of this absolute nightmare he had experienced there were murmurs of "you idiot" and “this was probably part of her dumbass plan cause she's a dumbass."

"At least Sasuke isn't here, Love," he murmurs into her hair. His nose picks up on the scent of lemon grass tea and catnip and something that could only be attributed to motherhood.

"No Fugaku." Her voice is coarse but he cages her in his arms, not letting her move away. "Fugaku, no." Her voice takes on an edge that worries him.

"This isn't good enough. It wasn't supposed to happen like this." She pulls away from him and is now looking straight into his eyes. She's like steel; strong and immovable. He tries to bring her back into his arms but she slaps his hand away and fuck can't she see how tired he is from this village that keeps trampling all over his clans efforts and look they've shed as much blood for the Will of Fire as any Inuzuka or Nara has so why are we always so ostracised.

"Fugaku." Her voice rises a debacle and suddenly she's not the dirty daughter of a shameful affair that no one in the clan wanted to accept as his bride, she's Hatake Sakumo's student, she's their matriarch and she's his equal. "Get up. Raise an alarm. We're stopping him."

She's up in an instant, there's still tears that fall from her eyes freely but the Uchiha have never categorised feelings as a weakness so she lets them fall. "You would go against your son?" He's barely putting up any sort of resistance, from either Itachi or Mikoto. Or the Uchiha or Konoha. He's so tired.

Now she's standing in front of him and there's a tanto strapped to her back, the same type as her late sensei's. An elemental blade. There's a chest piece armour strapped to her chest and she's currently struggling to put on arm guards but he knows that she will manage. "Get up." She's still crying but her anger and grief were always of a more subdued type. She's slowly calculating. Fugaku doesn't know what exactly but what he does know is that if Itachi is hailed as a genius then his mother is one as well by default. After all she was the one to teach him all that he knew to this day.

"The Hyuuga will be here in time to collect corpses and ensure that our eyes remain safe, please sit."

"You're giving up?" Fugaku realises that he's never heard his wife's disgusted tone before.

"I cannot raise a hand on my blood."

"You fool." She screams and oh maybe he didn't know his wife as well as he'd thought. "You fool. Minato is as good as our blood. As is his son. And Tsume and Kakashi and Hizashi and Hiashi but this clan was ready to kill everyone--"

"I am not the clan, Mikoto," he tries to raise his voice at her but he's so very tired and incredibly drained. "The eradication of those poisoned with the idea of a coup didn't go as planned but if Itachi sees his course of action as a suitable one then we should trust him."

"He's thirteen years old. Have you lost your gods damned mind?" She roughly wipes away at her tears, glare drilling holes into him. "I refuse to kill him, but we need to stop him."

"Oh?" He has picked up that cold, cold cup of tea from earlier and is spinning the liquid in it slowly. “And how do you propose we do that?”

::

Inu-1 won't let her play with the boy and that's such a bummer in Sakura's opinion. But her sadness is quickly forgotten in the face of Nezumi-12 picking her up and throwing her around the room to the rest of the people to catch. No one drops her of course, because Sakuraso had told her that any ANBU worth their salt would never drop a body. She doesn't fully understand what that means but she also doesn't trust him because if all of his previous attempts at shaving her hair short and putting her in boy clothes are anything to go by, he's probably a little crazy.

This goes on for a while until Taka-1 entered the room and gasped loudly at Sakura’s mishandling. It was a downward spiral as every woman and man in the room played hot potatoes. Except that there was a death penalty involved once Taka-1 found out who started this (“She's a civilian girl she's gonna crack her skull of the ceiling and die you fucking imbeciles”) and Sakura was the hot potato (“I don't care if her brother is in ANBU she's six, motherfucker”).

Taka-1 eventually did pluck her out of the air which sucked because Sakura had been having so much fun. But it is what is. A lot of fusing was what followed as a glass of warm water got pushed into her chubby hands. She began gulping it down while breathing heavily into the cup. Her shoulders were supported by the lady until she turned around to demand something. Sakura finished the water in a record of five seconds and continued with her shenanigans by trying to fit her entire fist into the cup.

“Where's Kuma-16? I need a hairbrush.” Her voice was just like mama's, very snappy.

An unforeseen bout of nausea hits Sakura out of nowhere, she lets the cup slip of her hands in her confusion and falls on her behind. Tears sprung from her eyes just as she threw up all the water she had just drank. The woman was crouched beside her in a second, lifting her head up slightly and rubbing her back in soothing motions. There were many orders given out that Sakura could barely make out in her miserable state. Most of which included lots of f bombs and “I'd rather be sent on assassination missions then do this, who the hell just throws up water” and a few “someone get Inu-1, don't kids like dogs?”

She's crying hysterically now. There's a disgusting taste in her mouth and Sakuraso is no where in the room and she just wants her mom and-

Oh. It's a puppy. Sakura bursts into laughter that she chokes on because of her hiccups. She beckons the animal to come closer to her using her outstretched hands. The dog stays rooted in place until someone's foot pushes it a little closer to her. A towel is wrapped around her and she's hoisted up into the air, but she feels that the movements are deliberately slow so she knows that the arms won't be throwing her around any time soon.

“Alright kiddo time for a bath.”

“But I want doggo.”

There's a pause as everyone registers the tremble in her voice.

“Doggo in the bath?”

There is a resulting squeal of pure happiness as the lady that's holding her continues on the trek to the bathroom and everyone collectively lets go of the breath they were holding. The voices behind her leave Sakura confused.

“Boss there's no way in hell I'm reducing myself to this.”

“It's for the good of the village.”

“I'm biting ankles.”

::

It's very early in the morning judging by the few people milling around the streets, most of whom look like they're built for heavy civilian work, and the shop vendors that are only now opening up their stores. Sasuke looks back at the man with the silly hairdo who's staring back at him expectantly. But Sasuke doesn't understand him so the man makes a ‘shooing’ motion. A frown takes over the boy's face and he sticks his tongue out in a petulant manner, ignoring a scolding voice in his head that sounds eerily similar to his father.

Turning on his heels he begins his march home. Three steps in and he pauses. Exactly where was he? But when he turns back to demand an answer from the masked man there is no one there. He scowls some more and begins walking straight ahead, fully intending to find the closest shop on the street to ask direction from a cashier. If he was luckier he might catch a clansmate on the road and demand to be brought back to the compound.

Of course he wasn't lucky. It took him the directions of a blind restaurant cleaner, a set of chunin twins on their way to a mission and the freely given ear rubs for every stray cat (secretly he had been hoping that at least one of them could be a talking Uchiha summon cat. Unfortunately, none of them gave him a human reply so he was left with the itching urge to sucker punch a summon cat to rid him from the trauma of witnessing the Trench Coat fiasco) he came across before he found himself in the part of the village that he recognised. It was one of the walls to the Hyuuga compound. While this wasn't as great as finding a wayward Uchiha to command, he was sure if he asked Uncle Hizashi with enough manners the side branch member would be willing to walk home with him.

He reached the compound gates eventually. Sweat beaded his temples and his hands were uncomfortably clammy, his irritation only grew in size because of his fatigue. At the gates there was only one Hyuuga guarding it as opposed to the usual number of two. The standing guard was talking to another man who had his back to sasuke. Without a care for etiquette he walked up the Hyuuga, trying his hardest to imitate that air of power and authority that his father managed to exude.

“Lord Sasuke?” The Hyuuga finally took notice of him after a lot of huffing and puffing out his chest. “How may I serve you?” The man looked worried if the defining crease of his forehead was anything to go by.

“I need an escort to the Uchiha compound.” After a bit of deliberation as that same voice that sounded a lot like father nagged him, he added on a reluctant, “please?”

There was hesitancy in the man's form. “I… don't think that this is a good idea right now my Lord.” The man that previously had his back to Sasuke was staring intently at the young boy. He proceeded to look up to the Hyuuga and catch his eyes. With a tilt of his head his raised left hands flashed through a series of hand signs. These ones Sasuke was one hundred percent sure were not ninjutsu signs since he knew all twelve thanks to his father's tutelage.

A thankful nod was returned by the Hyuuga as an answer and then his attention was back on the Uchiha boy. “Perhaps the young lord would like to come in and spend some time with the Princess while we look for an escort?” Sasuke wanted to ask him why the man couldn't do the escorting himself but he was too angry at being lied to. Enough time with Shisui, uncle Hikaru and Itachi had cultivated a talent in him for spotted white lies adults told him. But what really irked him was that he couldn't figure out what part of the guard’s sentence was a lie. Before he could inquire any further his mouth spoke for him.

“I want to go visit Aunt Atatakai’s bakery. Good day.” He formally bowed to them, a little lower than usual in his haste. Abruptly he turned and fled, fully intending to get back home and find out what was happening. He was starting to feel hurt, his emotions swirling like a mini tornado as he failed to understand why his parents dumped him in the arms of a stranger for the night and didn't come to collect him in the morning. The sun was steadily making its way to the peak if the unbearable heat Sasuke was facing was anything to go by. It left him cranky and he did his best to stab at his eyes with the heel of his palm to prevent tears from falling and adding embarrassment to the list of negative emotions he was currently undergoing. At this stage he would actually embrace Shisui if he saw him instead of aiming a kick at his kneecaps, such was his desperation.

The Uchiha residence was stationed at the far end of the village, right up against one of its walls which when he usually though about sent him into a chipper mood as he devised the best ways to climb the vines that Cousin Getsuma had spent years planting them from the cracks in his garden wall to the ten metres it took to reach Konoha’s western wall. But today was not a good day, not when he had yet to see a single Uchiha on the streets, no matter how close he got to his home. He made it to the compound of course. It was hard to forget the way from the Hyuuga to the Uchiha place when his parents had been pulling him and Itachi to attend tea ceremonies from the time he could walk. But once he reached the gates, Sasuke immediately hunched down as he gulped in air. He knew his face must be beet red from all the blood running around in his blood, Shisui enjoyed teasing him relentlessly about it. He took his time breathing and wishing for some water. He was at home now. He was safe. No more masked men with their dumb haircuts and no more lying Hyuugas, he was going to walk into his house and pitch such a fit.

In his tired state he failed to notice the lack of guards stationed at the wide open gates.

::

Another masked man came to stand in front of Sakura. Except that this one is very short, smaller than Inu-1 but his arms are covered and there's a mass of brown hair framing the mask. 

“Finally.” Taka-1 sounds extremely tired which confuses Sakura since the lady has been doing nothing all day. But she doesn't question her out loud, not when she's drying her hair and Sakura’s too scared of the idea of her getting angry and pulling her pink hair. So she continues to pat dry the puppy between her legs.

There's an impatient sigh from the woman but Kuma-16 stays rooted in place. “Boy I need a hairbrush so get to it.”

The man (or boy? Sakura is very confused, more than usual) stretches his arm outwards and for a second she's afraid he might show then The Finger but something starts to break out of his hand. Sakura squints as she tries to make out what it was, her fear over ridden by her curiosity. A tree? No it's too thin, but whatever it is is definitely made of wood. Sakura remains mystified until the man/boy uses his other hand to pull the shape out completely. The girl's eyes bulge out of her sockets as she recognises the shape. 

The girl pushes her hand out, palm upwards in an expectant manner. There's a pause that's quickly overcome by the man giving her the hair brushes. She brings it to eye level as she studies it. The material is rough and not lacquered so she's careful when running her finger on it to avoid getting a splinter stuck in her skin. It's a wide tooth comb, nothing like the small spiked circular brushes Sakura's mom uses on her thick and ridiculously hard to tame hair. The woman behind her plucks the hairbrush of her loose grip easily and begins to brush the knots out. It's a slow and tedious process considering the lack of any oils or leave-in conditioner that Sakura is accustomed to but she holds her complaints in fear of having her hair pulled.

“Um...mister? Can you make me a doll?”

There's a very rude snicker to her left that's silenced in the same five seconds when the man forms another brush and throws it at whoever laughed. An echoing smack sound and “dude, that hurt,” is her confirmation that the weapon hit it's target.

::

In Naruto's humble opinion, today was an absolute shit day. His crush, Sakura, came in looking like what the walking dead monsters depicted in the cartoon poster looked like. But she had a secretive smile on her face that had Naruto vibrating in his seat. But since he didn't approach her to talk, he never found out what was on her mind. Partly it was because of his short attention span, but partly because that one Uchiha wasn't here for him to bother which was seven different kinds of sucky. He burrowed himself deeper into his back aching bed, not really registering his movements in his lucid state of mind as he replayed the day’s events. 

Ripping him out of his silent musings, a piercing shriek of "demon!", as a caretaker pointed a trembling finger at Naruto, alerted every single soul in the orphanage.

The door was burst open with such force that the handle was embedded into the wall. "Hitoshi what's wrong?!", snapped an auburn haired, seventy year old woman.

"He did it again", she hissed as she leaped across the room, towards the door and away from the blonde boy. "Red, all over!" The woman was close to tears as she wailed to the mother of the orphanage. Naruto on the other hand stood in the corner, eyes downcast and his ratty blanket scrunched up around his ankles. A twinge of shame stabbed at his heart. He hadn't meant to let it leak out while daydreaming like that...

Sho Chinen had been running this orphanage ever since she was twenty six years old. The woman had lived through the third Shinobi World War, where her orphanage was used to house all sorts of people. She was a strict mother who didn't take any nonsense. She may not have been known for her kindness but she was fair. Therefore now, she had to deal with this nuisance of a woman.

"Hitoshi, get a grip, I've already informed you he often does that".

"He was playing with red chakra", the woman screeched as she frantically tugged at her clothes.

"That's exactly what I told you yesterday, the day you decided to work here", explained the mother as patiently as she could.

"But...but...he..!", Hitoshi sputtered.

"Enough, you will either tend to the boy and tuck him in bed, or you will go and help out the girls in the kitchen".

"He's a demon".

"He's a boy. One more word and I'll have you out on the street. You are a grown woman, now start acting like it", barked Sho.

The brown haired woman flipped her hair and stormed out of the room, refusing to apologise to...to such a creature, she made her way downstairs nonetheless. The second the young woman was out of sight, Sho's shoulders sagged in relief, at least this one didn't try to throw a kunai at the boy like the last caretaker.

"Boy, it's bed time. Lock away your pet, you can play with him tomorrow", snapped the elder before closing the door.

" 'kay", yawned the sleepy boy, rubbing his eyes, the adrenaline faded with the hysterical woman’s presence. The red chakra which had been seeping around him began to subside and disappear into the black marks imprinted on his belly. Before the last tendrils of chakra could disappear, he grabbed onto it, ignoring the pain as his skin burned.

"...stay", he whispered in his high pitched voice. He stood there for a few more seconds, to make sure it stayed with him, before letting go of it.

Naruto was feeling better now. What little bit of shame he had felt was no longer there. 'It isn't my fault,' he kept repeating to himself, forcing his mind to be happier. Old lady Sho always says it herself. He nodded his head as his breathing became normal and he was feeling okay once more. The only reason he had cowered was because he hadn't prepared himself for the worst when she arrived as he had been told by everyone in the Home that the newcomer was actually nice.

The boy hobbled up to his bed and pulled himself up, that last tendril of chakra pushing up from the ground, helping him to hoist his scrawny figure up. He got under his covers and ignored it all. The terrifying howls which came from outside, the gnarled branches as they bet mercilessly against the window, the happy cheers which floated from the other rooms, the sickly smell of mould on the walls, the dull grey wallpaper. He ignored it. After all he still had his 'pet' as everyone here called it. Even if touching it hurt him, even if it always shouted how much it hated him and even if everyone seemed to hate both him and his pet.

His only wish is that the red haired woman in his dreams stop crying.


	2. chapter two

**AN: chapter one and two have been edited**

Naruto’s had a rough start to his morning if the stinging tear tracks down his face are anything to go by. He resigns himself to a small crying session later on at the dinner table when the edge of a newly acquired nightstand stabs his side and leaves him wheezing in pain. It’s going to be a terrible, terrible day so he tries to quickly think up three things he is grateful for, just like the old man Hokage told him to. He squeezes a liberal amount of toothpaste onto a toothbrush with fraying bristles and attacks his teeth with vigor. He’s grateful for ramen obviously, the food of gods has yet to fail him. The water coming from the tap runs ice cold and wakes him up when he washes his face. And if he's feeling extremely generous, he might be grateful for the red stuff that seeps out of him from time to time. Sure, it might physically burn him when it touches his hand, and it tends to set fire to any cloth it comes in contact with, but it's still a sentient being that Naruto talks to (whether or not it deigns him with a reply is another story). He opens the door to his cramped bathroom and the smell of spiced miso soup causes his mouth to water, he struggles to wipe off the drool with the sleeve of his pajamas as he dashes up the hall and into the kitchenette. What he definitely knows is that he'll always be grateful for the Masked People. 

“Thing over there hates my liver,” is his greeting this morning. Naruto spots a bowl of warmed rice beside the soup and a small dish of pickled plums. He remembered his manners in time and didn’t pull a face at the umeboshi. 

“You know what a liver is?” It’s Nezumi-12 turn to look after him in the morning. Of course, he knew that the second he smelt the spice. 

“Inu-1 said tha’ the best way to kill some’ne was by lettin’ them drink af-la-tox-in. Liver can't fil’er tha’.” He scrunches his nose up in distaste and hopes that he pronounced it correctly. There’s a pause where she stops doing the dishes and turns her masked face to look at him. He can't tell what face she's making but he hopes it's not an angry one or else someone will have to dodge chair later on in HQ. 

“Inu-1 needs to go back to the academy and learn that this is not an acceptable thing to teach a six-year-old.” She picks him up under the armpits and puts him down on one of the four mismatched wooden chairs around the table. He starts picking at the rice with his chopsticks, pointedly ignoring the pickled vegetables that he knows will be shoved down his throat before the day ends. “Af-la-toxin can be filtered or...?” 

“Oh no it definitely can't. But it has a distinct taste so you best mix it in alcohol and not tea.” She then paused in the middle of placing a plum on top of the rice. “Listen here, that’s not what you're supposed to be learning--” 

By the time he's digging into his breakfast his face is stretched into a silly grin and nightmares of a wailing woman and bruised livers are the last thing on his mind. Nezumi-12 has always been his favorite masked person. She was kind and she spoke gently, she even let him hug her whenever she found him crying. But there were days when she would stand at his kitchen and even though he couldn’t see her face beneath the mask, he knew that it must be blank. There were days where Naruto had to push around chairs to sprinkle salt and a bit of soy sauce as she prepared bland meals in robotic movements, doing the bare minimum to make something edible. There were also times where she looked at him with what he knew was fear in her eyes, when a kid had gone too far in a playground and threw a rock at his face that drew blood, where he sat at the kitchen table as she cleaned the cut and dressed it with shaking fingers and did her best to avoid the wisps of red chakra that floated around him. 

“You ready?” Her gloved hand is outstretched in anticipation and Naruto wastes no time in slinging his backpack onto his shoulder to take her hand. 

He pumps a fist to the sky. “I'm so ready!” 

There were times where Naruto lied to himself and thought that this is what it feels like to have a family. 

:: 

“We ask that the all mighty goddess of the sun cleanse our kin of their sin”. A murmur of “Amaterasu” washed over the small gathering. Everyone lifted their right hand to lightly press onto their left eye. Fugaku watched in silence as a woman lifted her baby's chubby fingers and guided them to touch its eyelid. 

Fugaku grew up listening to cautionary tales about the Uzumaki clan. A clan that dealt in blood and death and writings that were powerful enough to raise the dead if the rumors were anything to go by. It was said that before Uzoshio fell, any shinobi that neared their islands could smell the rusted scent of fresh blood, it was so palpable in the air that if you stuck your tongue out while travelling by boat, you would taste iron rather than sea salt. This clan who's very first ancestors used to run their blood-soaked fingers through their hair after every battle until their children were born with the same blood red. A clan that struck fear into the hearts of its enemies for going against the natural laws of life by worshipping the god of death, Shinigami. 

“We ask that the all-knowing god of the moon guide our fallen sisters and brothers across the planes of the pure lands.” Another tidal wave (it wasn’t really a tidal wave. Back then it was, when the Uchiha stood as a strong clan of one hundred and four able bodied shinobi. Now, the ceremony was bleak and their collective chanting could barely be heard from the other side of the clearing.) of voices whispered “Tsukuyomi” and this time the people touched their right eyes. 

Being an exemplary Uchiha child, Fugaku never voiced his opinion on the bias of his clan and the rest of Konoha seemed to hold on to the fallen clan of the Uzumaki. But his thoughts and feelings were always there, shimmering like a tea kettle about to spill over. And now? Those opinions of his were wiped away in the face of the devastation that he has witnessed. His own clans' people had always reminded him of the Uzumaki if his desire to beat Kushina’s face rather than Hiashi’s smug face during his younger years was anything to go by. They were of kin with their dabbling's in death and the rebirth of strength in the face of loss. And it seems that now he truly understood what it meant to be on the outskirts of a village. 

“We ask that the all-powerful god of seas and storms protect our people in their next life.” His people (whatever was left of them) guided their hands to touch their noses. “Susanoo.” 

A calloused hand on his shoulder squeezed it and pushed the Uchiha Head to the front. Fugaku took the rest of the steps forward without help. He kept walking ahead, wishing that his wife was with him to fulfil her duty by his side and not Hiashi . He could still hear his son’s sobs and feel the stare of the young Hyuuga heiress who has stayed by Sasuke’s side for the last three days. He keeps walking, the chakra infused gravel crunches under his foot, until he reaches the piles of bodies laid down neatly in rows upon rows of slaughtered kin. He flashed through the hand signs required and took a deep breath. 

“Majestic flame destroyer”. 

:: 

"Old man I know you're in there". 

A week has passed since the funeral rites and Sasuke watches on as his clan struggles to accommodate The Change. He watched cousin Ria walk up to the tailor's house in their district, a bag full of damaged clothes in one hand and a plate full of desserts, to thank him in advance, in the other. He looks at her, wants to stop her before he subjects himself to watching her crumble. She puts down the bag right next to the door and he in turn forces his eyes to the ground. In his peripheral vision he can see her sockless sandaled feet kicking up a small storm of dust that Sasuke knows looks out of place in their cobbled street. She hasn't realized it yet. 

"I will actually put salt into your water pipes if you don't open out". Cousin Rai has always had a rich laugh that accompanied just about every one of her sentences. Sasuke likes to think that he is thankful that she's alive even if he can't muster any emotions that don't induce hysterical screaming and panicked breaths. 

"Uncle I am so salting your waters-" a pause. Sasuke stifles a laugh that is filled with his hysteria and instead bites his tongue until blood drips out of his mouth and you deserve that you _disgusting weakling you don't deserve to live you-_

He stays rooted in place, even after cousin Rai's sockless sandaled feet are gone and the only indicators of her presence are the shoe prints left on the small raised porch and the broken pieces of plate mixed with mushy custard cake remains. He lets himself look up this time. She's long gone, having run off the second she remembered The Change. He knows that she'll be back to clean off Uncle's porch, but he wonders how the cake will look like after weeks of being left out there to rot. It'll probably look like whatever is inside his skull. Gooey, fluffy, _disgusting, useless-_

Sasuke stays rooted in his place. He doesn't know what date it is but assumes that it must be a Sunday if Father told him he was to go to school tomorrow. Or maybe it was the middle of the week? Does it matter? There are abstract strings of thought being pulled around his head. He remembers his brother's mangekyou as it spined and showed him sharp edges cutting down aunts and uncles and cousins and the wives and husbands that Uchiha's took from outside of the clan. He remembers tea ceremonies held with Hinata as they snuck away from their parents, his father turning a blind eye to their mischief and uncle Hisashi giving them a disapproving look. He remembers blonde boys that looked like sunshine reincarnates and a girlish squeal of laughter as green-pink was thrown over his head he remembers- 

Death. And gore. And Itachi . And Aunt Nekora's gutted body. A senbon pierced through the eye of a sleeping toddler. He remembers- 

Mom. Itachi . Dad. He misses Itachi . Mom was always so soft and dad was always so harsh but Itachi was so perfect and always knew what to say and do even before Sasuke told him what was wrong. And a selfish, rotting, very bad part of Sasuke wishes that Itachi was still here, that it was someone else who decided to kill off seven eights of his clan. 

He hears footsteps and his heartbeat picks up as he identifies the person as his father before he forces himself to stay frozen in his spot instead of lashing out _"I wan' Itachi not you, go away."_

His father stops in front of him and lends him a hand so he could get up. Sasuke's skin pricks up with goosebumps at the idea of skin on skin contact so he pretends that he hadn't seen the hand and picks himself up. 

"Son". 

_'I thought Itachi was son.'_ Sasuke was always Sasuke. Itachi was _son_ . Itachi was _my pride, the future clan head._ He was _Itachi the Jonin , the Uchiha's fire, Amaterasu's gift_. Sasuke was Sasuke. 

"Let's go home." His father doesn't rub off the crusted blood on his chin like his mom would, doesn't question him, he just walks ahead. 

:: 

He watches Sakura punch Naruto so hard that he is pushed back into a chair that topples over. School is a nightmare. It's made worse by the fact that Hinata is nowhere in sight and apparently hadn't come to school yesterday either. There's a small voice in his head that feeds him with the treacherous idea of a Hyuuga massacre but that's pushed aside quickly. After all, Hinata doesn't have an older brother so she's probably just sick. 

Benzaiten Academy for all it boasts as the leading shinobi school in Konoha is still filled with naive kids who hold enough dreams and aspirations to make Sasuke gag. Because of its prestigious and selective entries, there is a recommendation system in place for civilian born kids which allows for them to apply by sitting for a scholarship. He knows that's how Sakura got in at least. A recommendation from the Yamanaka clan heiress' own mouth and the only reason the principal had to make her sit exams is because her self-righteous civilian parents came bursting in, demanding that their daughter work for her place, much to the embarrassment of the balding retired Jonin. 

There is a commotion around him and his skin is dotted with goosebumps in a matter of seconds. 

"Something happened..." 

"Most...dead..." 

"Daddy said…" 

"Yeah well Mom said…" 

He was going to scream. And he was going to keep on screaming until he somehow woke up in a world where Itachi flicked his forehead as a way to say no and dad smiled at him when he got the fire jutsu right and mom snuck him two cherry tomatoes into his lunch box even though the family physician keeps telling him it's bad to eat so many and- 

A shove. "Dude go si ' b'fore Iruka chews your ass. Not li’erally 'course, bu ' like…" he'd never seen blue eyes that were slit like cats. They didn't scare him like empty blue Yamanaka eyes did. They were wide and expressive. " Y'know how he gets!" A lot of flailing of arms punctuated the end of the boys' sentence. 

Sasuke stays standing for a second longer as he tries to will his legs to move. He feels sluggish and wishes he was back home. Another shove, but this time the boy grabs his sleeve and starts dragging him up to the back of the class where no one sat. Sasuke stumbles five times on the small steps and the whispers are set a fire once again. They sit down, Sasuke taking his time as he grips the desk and slides himself down the bench to make room for the blonde. Naruto on the other hand plops down and immediately sets himself to the task of swinging his feet under the desk at an impressive speed. At the back of his mind a small voice tells him that _it's going to hurt. This boy is going to burn him from the inside out._

The sound of a chalk scraping off a blackboard has him looking forward and wrestling the voices in his head into submission. 

" Ehh , what's the scribblin ' on the board for?" 

“...Sensei's writing." It took too much effort to speak and he needed water to sooth his patching throat. 

"Oh." Naruto squinted a lot at the board and wriggled too much in his chair for Sasuke's comfort but he didn't have it in him to say anything. 

Every once in a while, a student would turn around in their seat and look up at Sasuke but he managed to ignore it. Naruto on the other hand, took it upon himself to glare at the students who did so until they turned back, faces flaming red. 

"What…?" 

" ' stablishing dom'nance ." 

"Ah." 

:: 

Taka-1 froze in her place as the boy's words made sense with her. Oh no. Oh no _no no ._ There is no way that a whole ANBU squad dedicated to nurturing its village's jinchuriki messed up this badly. She flared her chakra in this month's Morse code to alert the closet guard to her which she knew was supposed to be stationed at an Akimichi run restaurant to her left. He appeared beside her in seven seconds flat and flashed through some signs. 

**_Jinchuriki. Stable. ?._ **

**_Yes._ ** Then she spoke out loud. “Something came up. I'll be back in fifteen minutes or so once I've sorted things out. Cover for me." 

"Hey wait now...!" 

She didn't wait for the operative to finish as she funneled chakra into the soles of her feet to continuously use the shunshin . It took her two minutes, twelve seconds and a dead mutilated hog to reach her destination, the Forest of Death, before she could flash through signs and draw up blood seals to enter into the ANBU hideout. It took her another minute, seven seconds and an insult thrown at a new operative who didn't move fast enough out of her way to reach the rec room where her squad would be situated during their off time. 

She flung the door open but no one outwardly reacted. "So. Jinchuriki is illiterate apparently. I wonder why." 

The room felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of it. 

"What?" Nezumi-12's voice remained calm even if his body was tense. 

"The Yondaime is going to kill us once he finds out." 

" Ahaaa don't be so dramatic-" Inu-1 voice and posture on the other hand was the epiphany of carelessness. 

"Listen, you," Nezumi-12 snarled. "You out of all of us somehow thought him ANBU sign language but didn't teach him how to read? Hatake what the fuck is wrong with you?!" 

He gave her an eye smile that he liked to cultivate especially for his team captain because he knew it made her blood boil. She took two steps back and threw a chair at him. 

"Someone send a missive to Kuma-16 to let him scout for baby word books on his way home. Koumori-26 after your shift scout the library and stalls for something appropriate as well. We'll have to rearrange the schedule and cut down on meditation time to schedule reading and writing lessons. 

"What? Why not cut down taijutsu time?" 

Nezumi-12 stared at him for a long time just to watch him squirm in his seat. "I know you're new to the squad but he has the energy tank of forty-two academy students if not more. We have to tire him out every day. Taijutsu stays. Meditation gets cut." 

"Yes captain." A mocking salute followed her order from Inu-1 which only prompted her to throw the coffee table at his head. 

:: 

School ended and Sasuke only had two breakdowns, both times he managed to run into a bathroom stall and away from people, all in all the day could have gone worse. He left the building and was one of the first people out. He had also lost Naruto in the throng of students spilling out but didn't worry much about it. 

Uncle Himaru was there just like his father had told him. With a password on the tip of his tongue that he'd memorized this morning to make sure that whoever was to meet him wasn't an imposter. 

It was summertime and his uncle met him at the gates, in a sleeveless top but his chest was protected with armor. "As the cherry blossom is considered foremost among flowers…" 

"… so the warrior is foremost among men." Sasuke finished the idiom. He's a little sweaty even with the summer breeze messing with his hair and clothes. But that isn't enough to take off his top. Especially not with an uncle around who he knows will question him about the nail markings that drag along his arms. 

They set off down the road, ready to make the long trek to the outskirts of the village. Yet they're stopped after their sixth step. 

"Sasuke!” It's the voice of a kid. One who has yet to break his voice but also hasn't reached the cracking stage at least. 

Himaru freezes up beside him and Sasuke is too tired to question his uncle. " D"ye wanna come play ball? It's mad fun I promise!" There's dirt smeared on his left cheek and the three dark marks on each side of his face stand out. But his slitted pupils are intense and his aura is so warm and ready to give and keep on giving- 

"I'm afraid the young Lord has to go home now." There's fear in Himaru’s voice and that elicits a reaction out of Sasuke. Sure, Naruto does some extreme pranks, the tiny dick caricatures Sasuke had to help out in scrubbing off the compound walls had left his knuckles raw four months ago, but he wasn't bad. Those drawings hadn't killed Himaru’s wife. 

"Oh." Naruto's face fell and so did Sasuke's mood. But Naruto jumped back quickly, waving off the young Uchiha as he jogged backwards. "Join us tomorrow kay? We'll have a match!" 

Sasuke had no idea what he was talking about and while a small part of him wanted to go with him tomorrow, the rest of him was too drained and will continue to feel drained for a very long time. 

:: 

“Heard the Uchiha were looking to liquify their assets?” 

Mebuki brushes her daughter's hair under fluorescent lights in a windowless room. This time there are oils involved so Sakura isn't in much pain except for the odd kink that her mom would have to untangle. It’s a slow process and Sakura loses herself in the lull of the conversation around her. 

She hears the displeasure in her mom's voice as she argues with her brother. “And what's that got to do with us? They're not some minor clan we can strike a deal with.” 

Uncle Ajisai has a wide grin on his face that makes him look like a shark, what with all the sharpened teeth in his mouth. “Exactly, if we make them feel in debt to us, we can wriggle out a favor.” 

“You think shinobi deal with honor?” 

“I think shinobi will find themselves willing to deal with us in the face of blackmail.” 

The air is stifling in their basement, a room that actually serves as storage area for rice and clothes that are not in season. Sakura puts a hair tie into her mom's open palm and begins wiggling her toes to bring back the life into them. She knows what she has to do next, run off and make herself invisible so that the grown-ups could talk without her presence getting in the way. 

“You're making reckless moves here Sai. It was a dangerous gamble for us to move to Konoha. And now you want to insert yourself into clan matters?” Sakura’s shoulders slump in on themselves at the tone of her mother's voice. She forces herself to continue breathing and act normally. 

“Hush now. Of course, my little sister wouldn’t know any better.” Uncle’s voice is condescending and it irritates her mom. Sakura feels it in the way the woman tightens the hold she has on her daughter's hair. Sakura keeps taking in deep measured breaths. “You still keeping that husband of yours in the dark?” 

“Shut up Sai. Just shut up ok.” Sakura is thankful that her mom has finally let go of her hair and stands up to move away from the two adults. “I'm never going to involve my family in my mistakes, you understand.” Her mother is breathing harshly and she's scared that she will end up being the recipient of her anger. Sakura stays pressed to the stone wall, letting the jagged pieces dig into her back. There's an ugly expression on her uncle's face, something like an enraged and smug look. He thinks he knows better than her mom, and maybe he does. But Sakura doesn’t appreciate his attempts at angering her mom. 

“Sakura,” she says harshly. “Didn’t you say you had to give back some book to your sensei? Go do it now.” Sakura opened her mouth, ready to make an excuse. “There's an address book upstairs, you know where it is. Now go.” 

She leaves of course. A part of her feels dirty as she skims the section under ‘U’ for Umino. After all, if what Uncle had once told her was true, being in possession of this handwritten book wasn’t exactly legal. She finds the address eventually and inks it onto the back of her forearm, just above her wrist where she could hide it from those around her. Sakura slides it back under the loose floorboard she took it out of and wonders if her dad truly doesn’t know about what goes on in the house. 

It’s a long walk to her sensei's place so she leaves immediately, the sound of a ceramic dish breaking off a surface rings in her ears. 

:: 

Rin tried to glare her hardest at her ex-teammate as he lounged on her sofa as though he owned the place. The keyword being 'tried'. A glaring Rin was the equivalent to a rabbit trying to intimidate a lion. The success rate of this was zero and Kakashi rubbed that in her face with a smug grin under his mask he knew she couldn't perceive. 

In a way, him acting so carefree—lounging in her furniture, shoes and jonin vest disregarded carelessly in a corner, hair mussed with one arm draped across his face and his whole posture screaming peaceful—not the like the usual rigid and cold ANBU he had to act as was cute. And rare. This moment should be etched in time... If Obito were here, she would have forced him to record this moment on his Sharingan . Moments like these were so scarce that her glare quickly melted off as she scurried to a corner to pick up his disregarded clothes and continued silently by folding them away neatly. 

"Kakashi, you really should quit sulking," she reprimanded him lightly, not having the heart to fully scold him. 

He mumbled some incoherent words and proceeded by turning his back to her as he brooded. 

She sighed and walked up to him before dropping a book on his head with a loud thwack. "My hand slipped." Kakashi made a choking noise of disbelief at the back of his throat. Even Obito's excuses weren't as trashy as hers. 

"Listen Kakashi," she began as he flicked through the contents of the book, skimming the lines. "I know something must've happened with the Hokage . I know, I know, something classified probably. But you need to lighten up!" Did she just give him porn? He had half a mind to chuck this abomination of literature back at her. "So, we'll start with this; today, I want you to walk up to the first person you see and say the first nice thing about them." 

"And then run away?" 

"And then run away." She nodded wisely. "While laughing like a maniac." 

Kakashi scowled at her and let the book drop to the floor. He winced and the action tugged at the studies that ran down his left rib cage. But for Rin who was in tune with his chakra signature, she noticed the spike of pain and went to grab a bottle of painkillers that she knew he would end up refusing. 

"I can't believe I became your personal medic Bakashi ." Kakashi didn't bother correcting her that she was his self-proclaimed personal medic. She then sighed dramatically before picking up the book on the floor and throwing the bottle of meds at him. "Instead of this, I should just throw rocks at people for a living, you know." 

Kakashi mumbled a "go away." He had just returned from a vigorous trading session (since he had destroyed half of a training ground. The earth users still haven't been able to level out the training ground with their earth style as they are constantly shocked by the residue of Kakashi's lightning) and was slightly injured. Rin, of course, had marched at him the second she smelt him entering the building and dragged him into her apartment. And so, Kakashi was found sulking on top of her sofa as she knelt beside him and healed his injuries. 

"I'm pulling a twenty-two-hour shift starting from tonight." _So, you know where I am. I'll be safe there._

"Hm.... The building's a mess." _You rarely spend time here nowadays._

"Yeah...I'll get to it when I can." _I spend every free moment with you._

"... Get some rest." _Don't over exert yourself._

"By the way, can you tell Genma to back off, please?" There was no hidden message behind her words this time and Kakashi narrowed his eyes at a spot on the wall above her left shoulder. 

"Hold my Chidori," he whispered under his breath. 

Kakashi may have been an epic joke at times, but he could also be so bland she didn't have it in her to hate him. 

And sometimes, when his walls were down, when he isn't using that stupid way of talking of his with the hints and implied answers, when he isn't punishing himself and his body isn't weighed down by his sins, when he isn't looking at her and seeing how he failed his sensei and teammate and father and so many others and it's only the two of them, Rin can't help but fall deeper for him. Even if it was one sided. Maybe this wasn't love—there will be no happily ever after nor will there be a prince Charming. There will be bonds and there will be a shinobi in the middle of a battlefield saving her teammate's life—but this was enough. She was still learning to accept his broken pieces because unlike so many which had given up, she was willing to pick up the glass—even if it cut her and she bled—she was going to slowly, gradually help put himself back together. 

A small trickle of nervous and weak chakra was suddenly noticed by the both of them. It also didn't belong to any of the five residents of this apartment block. Rin would have been on alert, if the chakra did not feel like an academy student. She rose from her place while Kakashi stayed there, his spidery limbs strewn across her couch. 

Opening her door Rin began making her way to the floor above her, where she felt the simple chakra flair heading towards. She stopped when she remembered that the one living above her was Iruka, an academy sensei. Everything made sense to her. She briskly walked back to retrieve a plate of dango she had made earlier on in the day to give to Iruka all the while wondering why he would invite a young student to an area filled with Shinobi complex housing such as this one. 

:: 

With his hair down and a coffee in hand, the last thing Iruka had anticipated was this. Outside of his apartment stood little Sakura Haruno, shivering slightly as the evening breeze blew by. She wore shapeless unisex clothes; a brown cap, knee length shorts and a grey jumper a size too big for her. He noted the red on her cheeks, elbows and knees from the cold. In her hand she clutched A Beginner's Guide to Kinasthetic Genjutsu. 

"I'm sorry, I was promised to give this to you today but forgot", she said hurriedly, her face conveying embarrassment. 

Iruka frowned as he took the book he had lent to her a week ago. "You do know it's okay Sakura," he told her gently, "you could've always given it to me tomorrow." 

She mumbled under breath but still nodded in understatement. 

At that moment a certain woman decided to make her appearance known. In Sakura's eyes she was beautiful with thick purple lines painted on each cheek, creased smiling vibrant hazel eyes and brown hair that went past her shoulder blades. 

"Good afternoon, sensei!" She announced in a chipper voice. In her hands was a covered plate which Iruka strongly believed had dango in it. 

"Afternoon Rin." He looked down at Sakura as he talked. "This is my neighbor, Sakura." The brown-haired man then looked up. "Rin this is Sakura, a student of mine." 

The lady, now identified as Rin to Sakura, smiled down at her before reaching under the covers of the plate and showing off one of Sakura's favorite desserts. 

"Dango?" 

Sakura shortly left the two grownups with a wave, two sticks of dango and a promise to be in school tomorrow. 

Rin looked at Iruka, her face posing a question. "Since when do you give your address to your students, sensei?" she asked out of curiosity. 

Iruka's eyes widened in realization. "I... I don't." 

And this was the first time Sakura Haruno had garnered his attention. 

:: 

When Naruto wakes up this time, there's a masked person inside of his room instead of in his kitchen. Whoever it is, is hunched over a notebook with a pen twirling around expertly in their left hand. They're leaning against the wall and he wonders why wasn’t the masked nin writing at his dinner table like a normal person. 

“Can you hear me?” 

He swings a hand over his face in annoyance, not wanting to deal with someone before he’d brushed his teeth and had breakfast. The air in the room is stale from a night spent with the window closed and there's sweat gathering in all the places that make his mood sour. “Can I take a piss first?” 

The masked man (judging by his physical build) waves him off and continues to write and then cross off whatever's on the surface of his copy. Naruto keeps his bathroom door open just enough to be able to catch glimpses of the shinobis twirling pen and his left foot. He didn’t actually need to use the toilet, instead, he had wanted to rudely voice his displeasure at seeing one of them (especially when it wasn’t Nezumi-12) so early in the morning. 

“We’re in the middle of changing your schedule. Nezumi-12 noticed that we had neglected teaching you how to communicate.” Naruto tilted his head to the side in question and tried to catch the masked nin’s eyes. He lifted his right hand and maneuvered it under the toothbrush in his mouth to flash through a set of hand signs he already knew. 

**_I. Talk._ **

The shinobi shook his head. “No, I mean how to read and write kanji and hiragana.” 

“The scribbles?” Toothpaste dribbled from his chin and onto his top. 

Naruto heard an exasperated sigh come from the man. “Yes, the scribbles.” 

  
  



	3. chapter 3; part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN; I realize that I've made a bunch of mistakes concerning anbu names and just the general grammatical errors so please bear with me while I sort them out in the coming days x

It’s exhilarating, running across the winding streets of downtown Konoha. The stalls are closely compacted and the people here are of a lower class, more willing to hide him behind their aprons or under their stalls as he does his weekly mad dash from the ANBU. Some streets, he has learned the hard way, are an absolutely no go, when he entered them and was promptly picked up into the arms of an operative in charge of him. It sucks when this happens but every run is a learning curve and Naruto continues to explore new avenues and abandoned buildings.

“Boy they’re catching up!” An elderly woman with little to no teeth crows to his left and picks up an apple from the cart behind her to throw it at the ANBU behind Naruto. There are sounds of dismay coming from the owner of said fruit cart and the ANBU does of course dodge. Naruto meanwhile tries his hardest not to choke on his laughter.

Some things make it worth living in Konoha.  This is one of those things. 

Naruto takes a sharp turn into a dimly lit avenue. His mood dampens as he enters the shady area, he feels like this is one of those bad places the ANBU don’t want him in, they’ll probably pick him up any second now. He feels the air being displaced behind him and resigns himself to the fate of being dropped into the academy fifteen minutes till the bell. Except that it doesn’t work out like that, the ANBU behind him jumps up the walls and runs along the tops, a few steps behind Naruto according to the looming shadow behind him. The boy is confused but happy to be allowed more space to continue exploring.

Meanwhile Taka-1, one of the two men trailing him, speaks up. “There’s a few prostitute places up ahead, you should probably stop him.”

“Why? They’re not bad.” Kuma-16 sounded honestly confused. His sentence ended with him expertly dodging a cat that tried to leap at him.

“I’m pretty sure it’s one of those things Nezumi-12 would kill you over. Please go pick him up.” Kuma-16 was a cute kid alright, but his sense of morality and social ineptness never ceased to leave him in awe.

“But they’ve always hid Konoha nin during war times. They’ll probably feed him and then put the jinchuriki to sleep.”

“Listen. Kids shouldn’t be around prostitutes. I’m 90 percent sure it’s like not good for their development.”

“And the other 10 percent?”

“Shut up and go get the-”

They froze as their charge’s massive and loud chakra signature suddenly disappeared without a trace. “Ah shit. I forgot they sealed the interior with chakra suppressants,” muttered Taka-1 unhappily. The issue of who decided to give brothels seal mufflers three shinobi wars ago was an unanswered question. And while it had always been a blessing for frisky clan heads and married men of status (being able to spend time at a place like that without being sensed there), it now turned out to be their downfall as they tried to guess which one of the three brothels down this road he had entered.

“I reckon it’s the first one. I feel like he would’ve jumped into the first building he saw,” for all of his abnormal cuteness, he was still kind of dumb.

“The middle one has sparkles on the door and the sign above. That’s where he went”.

Kuma-16 squinted at said door and sign only to realize that there indeed was purple glitter on the door and sign to the purple honey house.

“They have some questionable names.”

“Our corpses are about to be left in questionable states if we don’t get him out before  Nezumi notices that the nine tails chakra signature has suddenly disappeared from the village.”

Kuma-16 heaves a sigh full of sorrow and proceeds to leap from building to building until he and his partner are above the brothel in question. “How do we know if he’s inside, senpai?”

The older ANBU put a finger on the lower part of his mask, imitating a hush sign. _ “Listen.” _

As they crouched down on their hunkers, balancing on the aged tiles by the chakra on the soles of their feet, they heard noises waffling through the open windows of the establishment. 

“Oh, he's so  adorable, isn’t he?”

“No Akari put on your top! There’s a baby here!”

“Aw look at his cheeks so chubby”.

“Owwww”.

The younger of the two ANBU nodded his head. “You were right, he’s here.”

Taka-1 nodded his head sagely. “You see the difference between me and you aren’t our skill sets, rather it’s the experience we hold. Now go get the child before  Nezumi gets here.”

It’s sucks a little, being the youngest in the group and having to do the bidding of those older than you, but his annoyance is nothing compared to the fear he feels for  Nezumi’s wrath. He scales down the wall and drops into the window that holds the most noise. There’s a lot of cooing and ‘ahh- ing ’ going on behind the curtain that he slips through. Much to his surprise, the  jinchurki is cradled in one of the women’s arms like a baby, his short limbs sticking out over her arms as she rocks him and continues showering him in compliments. There’s a woman at the far end of the room smoking what he believes to be an illegal substance while looking at the child in disgust, Kuma-16 contemplates standing between them to protect Naruto from anything she may throw at him until she lets out a strangled, “why the fuck would you ever have a kid?  They're so expensive like”.

“Oh, but look at him he's so perfect. Aren't you baby?” And the little  jinchurki basks in the attention instead of squirming away in embarrassment. Kuma-16 feels a bit of shame at the thought of the boy being so attention starved that he would gladly  welcome affection from people of the lowest levels of society.

Another woman enters the room in a flurry of skirts and a bowl full of steamy soup. Kuma-16 instincts and internal poison alert kicks in full and he flash steps in front of the boy more so out of ingrained training than any suspicion of the woman's intent to poison the boy. The women freeze in the face of his appearance. The woman holding the boy shields him and speaks up. “I’m warning you, we’re under Yamanaka watch.” While  she's talking the girl closest to the door had run off, more likely  than not to find the matron of the establishment. The thundering of two sets of feet coming back up the stairs confirm his thoughts.

“I'm here for the boy.” His words are muffled through the mask but loud enough for them to hear. The matron comes in, a woman he knows is a Yamanaka just from her eyes, even if her hair is an unusual brown color. A bastard child more than likely. The room is silent save for the harsh breathing of the two that had just entered it along with the sounds of crunching hard candy that are coming from Naruto. The matron is a slender and tall woman, tall enough to dwarf his frame when she walks up to him.

“A report from Inoichi?”

“No ma’am. I'm here for the  jinchurki . I apologize for any disturbance he might have caused,” he recites something that he has had to spout out more times than he can remember for the last two years.

The woman holding Naruto flips him around until he's handing behind her and she's holding him by the ankle. “Are we talking about the nine tails?” she whispers. Naruto continues to crunch through the sweets in his hands.

“No, the fucking two tails,” the matron replies sarcastically.

The woman holding the boy pouts but pulls him back up and settles his small body into her arms. “The boy is welcome here any time he wants,” she informs Kuma-16, then the matron turns to address Naruto personally. “But you'll have to use the back door and keep your hands on your ears ok?”

Naruto nods happily, his slitted blue eyes sparkling and Kuma-16 knows that he's worked his magic on the matron when she has to take a moment to stop a small smile from breaking out of her stern visage. “Now shoo.” She turns back and heads down the stairs. The girls quickly crowed around the boy much to Kuma-16 dismay. They leave lipstick marks on his face as they kiss him goodbye and fill his arms with bars of chocolate and small pieces of hard candy. As they move back, Kuma-16 steps in to take the boy into his arms to finally leave. And to his growing surprise he has to pry the woman's arms off Naruto as  she stares  longingly at the boy.

“Come over ok?”

Naruto nods his head enthusiastically and tries to talk with a mouth full of sweets. “I pwomise.” He keeps his neck craned until he's out of the window and can't see the kind ladies anymore.

On the roof top, Taka-1 mutters a very fond, “what the hell?” as he watches the younger agent try to rub lipstick stains off Naruto’s face only to make the colors blend together and leave behind an even bigger mess. “Please tell me there is a water source somewhere close,” Kuma-16 voice sounds desperate in the face of the news that his charge is already five minutes late to school.

“The  Akimichi have a pond open to the public. Two-minute run to the east?” 

They run. Then they dunk his face a few times in the cold water while the boy laughs joyously and Taka-1  laments at the  boy's nonexistent survival instincts.

::

“Where the hell is that willow bark container?”   


Her mother is  all over the place today and because of this  Sakura knows that two things are going to happen; the first is that big brother  Sakuraso  will be coming over and the second is that she won’t be getting new clothes for the next two months nor  anything else aside from basic meals.  The older she  becomes , the  angrier she feels  herself becoming  at the idea of having all the nice things withheld from her , even the thought of seeing her brother after three months of absence doesn’t cheer her up. It’s embarrassing having to go to school with the same two outfits and  being bullied for it,  it's even more  embarrassing when the girls are  able to show off  new friendship bracelet and cute bento  boxes  and hair accessories.  Sakura remembers throwing tantrums when she was four only to be slapped across the face  by her mother and listen to her hiss “ you almost  told him.”  So, Sakura keeps her distance from her mom in case she gets angry again and  makes sure to talk as little as she can with her dad so that she doesn’t let it slip on accident.

“ Sakura .” She jumps a little and quickly straighten herself before her mom catches that. She did of course , and it shows with  the deepened scowl on her face.  “ Where’s the birthday money Ino’s father gave you ?”

Sakura wants to scream and shout at her and tell her ‘no it’s mine not yours’ but she’s been so  careful for the past two years to ensure that her mom doesn’t hit her again. So, she shuffles her feet and walks up the stairs as slowly as she could get away with.

“ Get a move on  it kid .”

She reaches the top of her squeaky stair case and opens the door to her room. Books litter the place alongside trinkets from all over the world. Except for what lies across the Great Sea because no shinobi has ever made it across there. Sakura has often dreamed of becoming the best shinobi swimmer and making it all the way across the Sea where she would save a city and become a queen and have all the money there is to have. She’d share some of it of course, but most of it would be hers to keep. Reaching into her drawer Sakura pulls out the purple envelope Ino’s dad had slipped into her bag with a finger pushed against his lips in a silencing manner. She had only giggled at that time, unaware of what was inside but eager to keep a secret. She was very good at keeping secrets.

Curiosity overcame her so she ripped the envelope with clumsy fingers, she tried her hardest not to tear the actual bills. Once the side was off the bills flew down to the floor in zigzag motions that made it hard for Sakura to catch. She did get them all in the end and sat down to look through them. The sum in her hands looked more than last year’s but Sakura can’t tell, not when last year her mother had seen the envelope when she had just stepped out of the party and opened it up immediately to take the contents for herself. She wondered…would her mom really notice of she took some for herself?

“What is taking you so long?” an exasperated voice was walking up the stairs and Sakura had to do this fast.

She took five bills out of the stack of fifteen and in her state of panic, she kicked off her indoor slippers to shove the five roughly folded bills into the inside and then to the bottom of her sock. Her mom walked in on her putting on the slipper back and then proceeding to clean up the shredded pieces of the envelope around her.  Mebuki let out a sigh and picked up the stack of money by her daughter. She lifted them to her face and ignored Sakura as she counted through. “Hmm same as last year,” she muttered.

Sakura on the other hand felt like she was going to pass out. Blood rushed to her head and she heard waves crash in her ears as she realized what she’d done. Her mother would kill her once she found out what she had done. For all her jumping and scampering she had never felt true fear like now.

“Every little helps anyways,” she said grudgingly. She walks out of the room, a permanent limp on her right foot has always been what gave her away. Childishly, Sakura sticks her tongue out at her mother’s back just as she disappears about of her room. It helps a little to alleviate her mood, but she’s still shaken and in need to find a hiding spot for her money since the bills on the soles of her feet keep digging uncomfortably at her skin.

Looking around the room she knows from past experience that nothing can be hidden in the closet nor any loose floor boards. Her bed is also out of question since her mom likes to surprise clean her room with no warning prior. The trinkets around her room tend to be dusted and wiped down so she can’t hide the money in them. She looks around at the five shelves that stand to her left, filled with books to the brim. Some she’s already read and some are grown up books with words that are too complicated for her to understand. An idea lights her mind up. Her books are the one thing her mom never touches, not when she practically worships what she has always considered  Sakuraso’s best gifts to her. She dusts them down weekly and had always pitched fits when her mom tried to touch them. Taking down the closest children’s book to her, one that she’s read twenty times over and had grown bored with already, she fishes out the notes in her sock and presses them into the middle of the opened book and closes it as fast as she can, too scared at the idea of getting caught by her mom. Once the deed is  done, she’s running down the stairs to finish the rest of her breakfast.

“What were you doing upstairs?” Sakura tries her hardest not to look guilty in the face of her mother’s accusing tone. She shrugs her shoulders and climbs the seat she had been on earlier. The rice has gone cold and Sakura does her best to swallow it down while craving a pickled plumb. 

Walking up to her daughter’s seated back,  Mebuki roughly gathers her daughter’s short heart into a high ponytail and secures it with an elastic band. Her hair is short from the last time  Sakuraso had visited and chased Sakura around the house with a pair of scissors.

“Once you're finished make sure you get to school on time. Graduating the academy is the only way you’ll make something out of yourself instead of relying on a man.? She sounds incredibly annoyed and Sakura has long since decided that she hates being subjected to her mother’s speeches about her father's  inadequacy and her own failures as their second child. She practically inhaled the rest of her rice before jumping off the chair to get her bookbag that was stationed by the door, an excuse to not let her mother continue to talk.

“Keep up the grades!” she shouts after her, “and make sure your sensei notices you!”

::

“How is she doing today?”

He’s sitting with his brother  Himaru . The weather is as hot and cloudless as that day. The two main branch members are sitting in the garden that is located in the center of their property. Bordering the gardens are the various rooms to be found in a compound. There’s a fountain that  Himaru has always liked to stare at as he smoked. A depiction of their patron goddess,  Ametarasu . They’re both smoking on the veranda to the sitting room.  Himaru is on the grass, lightning grass blades with a match stick before sniffing then out just as quickly.  Fugaku also has one between his fingers. He picked up smoking around the time he awakened his  mangekyou but quit soon after him and his wife were back on speaking terms and she let him know that she didn’t appreciate the smell. He taps the cigarette and lets the ash fall onto the silver platter between himself and his brother. His situation right now feels like a copy of what happened during the  mangekyou incident, except that this time the consequences outweigh any power he could’ve obtained.

Himaru turns over on his back to look up at his brother. “Mikoto? Still comatose. Bansai on the other hand flat lined in the morning.”

Theres a strained type of silence before Fugaku breaks it again, “32.”

“Huh?”

“We’re down to 13 shinobi and 19 civilians.” Silence follows the explanation and  Fugaku doesn’t understand why he’s trying to beat down Himaru’s mood.  Fugaku should be thankful that at least his own wife was alive. 

“I’m sure we can bump the count a little higher.”  Fugaku wishes he had his brothers healthy coping mechanisms. “There’s an Uchiha married into the Yuhi clan and two in the  Sarutobi clan. And that one that ran away with the Yamanaka boy. Isn’t she working for the Daiymyo? And there are probably others that deserted during the wars that we can find around Fire maybe-”

“He killed his own fiancé.” The cigarette slipped through stiff fingers onto the tray. “I knew he didn’t care for the clan, but even the love of a woman wasn’t enough-”

“He’s thirteen years old you dolt. I doubt he understands Izumi’s devotion to him. C’mon, knowing him he was more likely than not ordered by the filth up there,” turning his head to the side he spit on the grass.

He misses Mikoto terribly but he dreads her awakening and the wrath it'll bring forth. She was inconsolable when  Kushina died and it took months for her to get used to the idea of having her own son cleanse the clan under the guise of a massacre, he could only imagine how angry she’ll be this time. Himaru opens his mouth and continues spewing enough hate to be labelled treason.

“ Bet we’ll be brought down to the status of minor clan. So much for founding this bloody village and then building it up.” His brother has always been like a switch, his mood swings so sharp that growing up people had always eyed him wearily, not knowing  whether to expect a hug or a left hook from him.

“Our ancestors founded the village not us.” It took too much effort to open his mouth and talk, the buzz of nicotine making him lazier.

“Whose side are you on again?”  Himaru had one eye closed and the other glared at him through the red haze of a  sharingan . Directing his cigarette butt between his thumb and forefinger he expertly shot it at his elder brother, who dodged it with the grace of a wounded boar.

“Brother would it really hurt us to be labelled a minor clan? Don’t you think that the government and any citizen who were suspicious of us would calm down in the face of this...development? We need time to heal and take care of ourselves.”

“Ancestors. Ancestors will role in their  _ graves _ .”  Himaru flicked absentmindedly at the lighter and continued to oppose him, but they both knew that their hearts weren't really in the conversation, not when there were issues such as loosing land if they couldn’t pay water and heating bills as well as land tax. Uchiha children may face a new prejudice at the academy and tension may grow in  genin teams that hold an  Uchiha child.  Fugaku knew that even in the face of a one true enemy, Konoha would still look at the clan as a whole and blame them. 

Waving the conversation away,  Fugaku turned to the more pressing issue, something that would have to be delt with soon and couldn’t be procrastinated. “A man by the name  Ajisai Terumi came to us on the issue of liquidating our assets.”

Himaru perked up at that. “Tell me how does a man outside of the clan know that were liquifying assets when I’m only hearing about this now?” Fugaku could see his brother try to feign mock hurt and bring a bit of comedic relief to the entire situation but he was too laced up with suspicion and there was a deep-rooted fatigue to be found in his bones.

“He's a black-market seller. I’m sure Sakumo once told me that people in that industry can smell a deal from a country away.”

“Sounds about  right,” his younger brother muttered in agreement.

“There’s still much cleaning we have to do before we can settle down to ration out family heirlooms and exchanging treasure with illegal sellers.”

Himaru quickly got up from his position on the grass and turned to look at his brother, a frantic look on his face. “Now wait a minute are we actually going to deal with a black-market seller? He’ll probably snatch your  sharingan while he’s at it. Wait you know what that’s not even the biggest problem here, we’re probably being watched like hawks right now, you can’t dive into something illegal like that!”

Fugaku’s eyes watered slightly at the smoke of a newly lit cigarette. The usual sound of cackling followed as he closed the lighter, signifying that some of the ends of his unkempt hair had caught fire and frizzled out just as quickly. “Brother, there is nothing worse that can happen to us. We are as cursed as one can be.”

He noticed  Himaru eyeing him from the side and a look of worry over taking any hate that had been festering in him. “Hey now, we’ll get through this somehow. But I feel like there’s something else weighing you down. You know that you can confide in me, right?” He raised his left hand and gripped Fugaku’s shoulder in a show of support.

“I know-” pain laced his shoulder and prompted  Fugaku to look up at his brother. An ugly look crossed  Himaru’s face and his fingers dug painfully into  Fugaku’s shoulder, causing him to wince. “Brother?-”

“Who the fuck does he think he is? Couldn’t make it to the funeral could he-”

It took a second too long for  Fugaku to recognize the flaring of a powerful chakra at his doorstep before he was clamping his hand onto his brother’s mouth in a warning manner. “Stop spewing words of treason you fool.”

Himaru scowled but relented at the same time, his temper unusually short.  Fugaku got up after instructing his brother to clear up and leave the garden, not trusting him to not set fire to the  Hokage’s robes. His bones ached and his limbs moved like a machine that hadn’t been oiled in months. He crossed the sitting room without stumbling into furniture, just the wall, and reached the door. He ruffled his hair out of his eyes and dusted off any ash from his top, noting that it had been weeks since he had worn his Jonin vest. He opened the door reluctantly.

Sunshine Minato stood there, a man who  Fugaku had once decided to put all of his trust onto, instead of his clan. The fourth  Hokage was a charismatic man, full of smiles and perfect words to bring peace to any situation.  Fugaku had never envied him, not when he never was the type who craved the limelight. Yet, he knew that he had always admired the boy who could take a beating from the villages  jinchuriki and still love her, and then later the man who took a platoon of Konoha shinobi from different backgrounds and used them efficiently to bring down one thousand enemy nin in a fell swoop. 

Yet in front of him stood a haggard man who didn’t have his  Hokage cloak on. There were dark circles under his eyes and sharp cheekbones prodded from his dull skin, they looked so sharp that  Fugaku wouldn’t be surprised if they broke through the skin barrier. His back was hunched too and  Fugaku knew that they both mirrored each other in how tired they looked right now, even though he currently stood in front of him with a  half-smile of his face, his eyes still betrayed the weariness he felt.

“Old friend...” Minato started off. There was none of the vibrant confidence  Fugaku had long since learned to associate with the  Namikaze . “I feel your loss my friend. Tsunade had been sent for and has just arrived, she’ll be looking after Mikoto personally. Of the five that had fallen into the Tsukuyomi genjutsu, one has already awoken thanks to her efforts.”

_ What? _ Fugaku’s eyes narrowed at what he heard. What was happening to the weariness and suspicion he had expected? Where were the accusations and the hands that twitched over kunai, ready for a fight? Not only did Minato come here bearing good news, he acted as though it had been his own clan massacred. The silence stretched on a little longer and Minato wrung a bit of the sleeve of his bright blue shirt between his hands as he awaited a response from the clan head.

“Come in.” His voice came out rougher than expected. He turned back and made his way to the sitting room, the  Hokage at his heels. Arriving at the L shaped table, he gestured for Minato to sit at the longer side and picked up the shorter side to position it in front of Minato. The man gave his thanks but it didn’t change his haggard appearance in the slightest. Deciding to take pity on him and initiate some conversation instead of making his  Hokage feel like a prisoner  he cleared his throat and began to talk.

“Trouble at work?” Having put the table in a satisfactory position, he rose to his height and moved to the back of the room where a small kitchenette was attached for when the room had to be sealed and the maids were best kept away.

Minato tilted his head back, and  Fugaku noticed that he was eyeing the room. “Administration is having a field day at the tower and at the intelligence division as they try to adept to the loss in the force.” He paused to lick his lips and his eyes caught  Fugaku’s for a second as the man stood silently, waiting for the water to boil. “We’re losing members from the barrier team by the day. A mistake from the inside allowed for the seals to be frozen over certain compounds on the day, so no one noticed the disappearance of so many chakra signatures on that day.”

“And the ANBU stationed around my residence?” He noticed Minato eyes pinch at the implication of an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ but Fugaku couldn’t be bothered to be tactful, not when the memory of Mikoto walking up to the ANBU and begging them to intercept  Itachi was still fresh in his mind.

“They weren’t mine  Fugaku .” He looked so earnest and his voice was pleading, but everything seemed too damn convenient. “Danzo had switched out the ANBU that were supposed to be there for emergency backup weeks prior without my knowledge.”

Fugaku picked up an empty pot and rinsed it out from any dust it could’ve collected. He picked out a small towel and dried the ceramic pot while looking at the impressive array of tea cups they had. He took his time picking out a set that would match the pot. He tried very hard to ground himself. “So many coincidences, even though we had taken one precautionary measure after the other. Children dead. I have a son who lost his mind and went rouge, another son who’s losing the handle on his own sanity.” He finished prepping everything onto a tray, the leaves spinning lazily in the pot. He  kneeled down and set the tray in front of Minato. “The funeral was two weeks ago, what do you want from me?”

A hand rose from the back and settled on his right shoulder blade, the place where sunshine Minato had once begged the friend group to let him tattoo it permanently on them in case of an emergency. He remembers childish glee on the face of a teenage Minato who had cracked open one of the Second’s  jutsu and made it his own. He remembers years spent on the battlefield as Minato appeared and then disappeared within the same three seconds, just at his right side and away from the blade he knew  Fugaku swung. He remembers years of getting used to a fizzle in the air and then a soft pop as Minato  materialized beside him. 

“Nothing but camaraderie my friend. I have seen to it that disciplinary actions were taken against those who’s mistakes have led to this loss. Your clansmen are being given the best care and the best doctors we have. I’ve sent my condolences on paper but it’s time I did so in person.” The grip on his shoulder was feather light, everything about Minato had been soft and swift as opposed to the passion and roughness associated with his clan of fire. “The village has your back; I promise you this much. I know that it’s been a week since you have had your obligatory mourning period, but we gave you some more time before calling a clan head meeting. It’ll be held this afternoon at  Shikaku’s place. Will you attend?”

He makes it sound like the Uchiha had been such a loved community but he knows that there are those who are currently rejoicing at their loss. He wants the small bitter part on him to fester and grow and protect him against what will be said at the meeting, but feelings require effort and Fugaku has no energy to exude.

“I will be in attendance.”

“Thank you,” something akin to relief is all he hears as Minato stands up and walks around the table. It’s a testament to how much he trusts him, or maybe a testament to how tired he is, that  Fugaku doesn’t turn his head around and watch him like a hawk while Minato was at his back, a shinobi’s weak spot. “I need to stop at Hare’s family.”

“For what?” He’s steering the pot absentmindedly as he watches Minato get ready to head out.

“Their son worked as a secretary for me after an injury took him off the roster.” he waves a yellow colored envelop un his hands and  Fugaku knows that the sentimental idiot is trying to take the attention off his too bright eyes that are holding back tears. For a moment  Fugaku wondered if, truly, there were others in the village who had suffered the after math of this massacre or if they were the only ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for the positive feedback, it fuels me to write, no matter how short the reviews are. I appreciate every single one of yous. 
> 
> If anyone has any scenes they would like to see pop up later on in the book, or any questions please ask away and I will answer.

**Author's Note:**

> that was my take on the type of abuse naruto would have faced in the village. micro aggressions, people ignoring his existence, the extreme would be what i have written just there. i added his part last minute so it might not be fleshed out properly.
> 
> ps; looking for an editor


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